Today, OurCrowd is featuring Part 2 of a special 3-part series from Matt and Wayne, the founders of Crowdability

Crowdability provides individual investors with independent research and education on equity crowdfunding. With their free service, they aim to simplify the process of discovering and evaluating crowdfunding opportunities.

In this series that they’ve created especially for OurCrowd, Crowdability will address investors’ 3 most common concerns about Equity Crowdfunding.

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In Part 1 of this Series, we addressed a concern about whether equity crowdfunding makes sense for ordinary people who aren’t intending to invest millions.

Today we’ll address another common concern – namely, that early-stage investing is too difficult, or takes too much time.

For one thing, since the companies raising funds are private, they’re not obligated to disclose details of their operations or financial results. Gathering this critical information can be challenging and time-consuming, and interpreting it can be even harder.

That said, there are many ways to make the process faster and easier…

Let’s look at three of them now.

1. Actively “Follow” The Pros

Unlike the public stock market, where investors can be secretive about what they’re buying and selling, equity crowdfunding is extremely transparent.

By paying attention to what’s happening on crowdfunding platforms like AngelList, we can see when well-respected investors invest in start-ups.

We can then follow these investors – professional investors who often have many years of experience and a track record – into deals they’re putting money into.

For example, we can see when someone like Reid Hoffman (the founder of LinkedIn, and now an active investor) writes a check to a start-up. If we like the company, we can invest too – on the same terms as Mr. Hoffman.

AngelList tracks all of this activity, making it easy for us to stay up-to-date on our favorite investors.

2. A “Mutual Fund” For Start-Ups

With this strategy, you can write one check… and gain access to 10 or so different companies. It’s almost like a “mutual fund” for start-ups.

One downside to this approach is that you’re not able to “cherry pick” the companies you’d like to invest in. You either invest in all of them, or none at all.

3. Let a “Pro” Do the Heavy Lifting

Another way to simplify the investment process is to let one of the crowdfunding portals do the “heavy lifting” for you.

OurCrowd, for example, created a service for investors that automates the entire process. Here’s how it works:

Investors like us decide in advance how much total capital we’d like to allocate to equity crowdfunding deals on OurCrowd. There are 4 options, from $100k to $1 million.

OurCrowd then identifies the most promising start-ups, and does all the research and due diligence. When they find a company that’s investment-worthy, they negotiate the “deal,” invest their own capital – and allow us to invest alongside them.

If we like the deal, we’re automatically guaranteed access to it. OurCrowd uses a portion of the capital we’ve already committed.

Save Time – Boost Returns

Investing in equity crowdfunding deals can be a great way to diversify your overall investment portfolio and boost returns. Investing using one of the above methods will simplify the process, save you time – and hopefully maximize your returns!

Crowdability provides individual investors with independent research and education on equity crowdfunding. With their free service, they aim to simplify the process of discovering and evaluating crowdfunding opportunities.

In this series that they’ve created especially for OurCrowd, Crowdability will address investors’ 3 most common concerns about Equity Crowdfunding.

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“Dear Matt and Wayne: Does investing in equity crowdfunding deals make sense for me? I’m not a professional investor, and I’m not planning to invest millions into start-ups.”

Several times a week, our subscribers ask us variations of this same question. Since it’s such a common concern, we thought we’d dig into it today.

Let’s start with the simple answer:

Yes, it does make sense – even if you’re not a “professional” investor, and regardless of how much you intend to invest.

You see, equity crowdfunding was specifically designed to help small companies raise small rounds of financing, ideally in small amounts from many investors.

The fact is, you can dip your toe in the water for less than you might think.

Let’s take a look…

Getting Started

Based on their knowledge of private placements or traditional venture capital funds, many people assume they need to allocate millions of dollars to be an early-stage investor.

But thanks to equity crowdfunding, you can generally get started for about $10,000 – far lower than the millions it would take to become a limited partner in a venture fund, or the $50,000 to $100,000 minimums of private placements.

These low minimums enable you to build a portfolio of start-ups – a basket of many of them – over time. And given the risk of each individual company, this is a critical part of early-stage investing.

To put start-up risk in perspective, let’s take a look at how the professional investors go about their craft.

How the Professionals Do It

Venture capitalists are the professional investors who provide funding to young companies when they’re just an idea on the back of a napkin.

They know that for every “winner” they invest in that earns them a massive return (Facebook, for example, provided its early investors with a 2000x return), they’ll invest in 5 to 10 others that will either stumble along – or will go out of business entirely.

That’s why it’s so important to build a portfolio of holdings.

What It Means To Be “Diversified”

To make the numbers easy, let’s say you have investable assets (stocks, bonds, cash, etc.) of $1 million.

The professionals recommend that individuals allocate only a small portion of their assets to early-stage companies – in general, no more than 5% or 10%.

With $1 million and a 10% allocation to early-stage investments, you’d have $100,000 to invest in early-stage companies. (You can re-calculate the math based on the real size of your own portfolio.)

Data has shown that, for early-stage investments, you need a portfolio of at least 10 or 12 investments to be “diversified.”

In the above example, to reach your $100,000 allocation to early-stage deals, perhaps you’d commit $10,000 to each of 10 different companies.

Keep in mind that you would make these investments over the course of several years – for example, $20,000 per year for 5 years.

Lean On The Professionals

As you can see, you can become an early-stage investor and get the benefits of a diversified portfolio… all without investing millions in startups.

What’s more, you don’t have to do it on your own…

With some equity crowdfunding platforms – including www.OurCrowd.com – you can invest right alongside the professionals.

We believe that, with a little help from the pros, everyday investors can leverage equity crowdfunding to enhance their overall portfolio returns.

We applaud our readers who write us with their questions and concerns – and we’re always happy to help. For our next column, we’re going to cover another concern we often hear:

From the time of its establishment in 1948, Israel has been at the forefront of agricultural research & development. Since then, the Startup Nation has evolved from an agrarian powerhouse to a hotbed for high-tech companies’ R&D headquarters.

Under the pressure of its far larger and often hostile neighbors, Israel and its government began to realize that in order to survive it would need to direct much of its resources toward developing technologies.

Just four years later, University R&D hit the Technion Institute, and has since been one of the leading contributors of patents and developments in agriculture, science, medicine, and of course, technology. In 1968, the government elected to establish a national office for a Chief Scientist, often referred to today as Matimop. This department plays an important role in creating the funds for, as well as advising certain R&D projects that have shown their potential. Matimop provides grants to further R&D projects in the areas of communication, electronics, software, and other developments.

Israeli R&D Today

Since the establishment of this office and the appointment of a chief scientist to oversee R&D operations in Israel, dozens of the most influential and successful companies have opted for R&D centers in Israel. According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel currently hosts 1,800 R&D-based companies, which together, have generated $20 billion from export of goods. Furthermore, the government budget for R&D has risen substantially, and continues to be the highest among any country. In 2011, Israeli R&D accounted for 4.39 percent of the country’s GDP, considerably more than the United States’ 2.77 percent.

At the Forefront of the Tech World

Israel’s incredible success when it comes to startups is no secret, and some of the world’s largest and most well known companies are firmly grounded in the Startup Nation. Though Israel has exemplified its proficiency and progress in agriculture, academia, the sciences, medical and pharmaceutical advancements, technology has proven to be the chief player in the Israeli R&D industry. Multinational monoliths in the tech sector have R&D centers in Israel, including companies such as Intel, IBM, BMC Software, Cisco, HP, and Motorola.

Among the largest R&D centers in Israel are Intel and HP. Since 1974, Intel has expanded far beyond its first non-U.S. production center, taking responsibility for 20 percent of all high-tech exports, and 10 percent of its total exports. For HP, a large chunk of the company’s business comes directly from Israel. According to Raffi Margaliot, General Manger of HP Software in Israel, 55 percent of HP’s software releases in 2012 were made possible by the company’s center at the Technion Institute in Haifa.

R&D in 2014 and Beyond

Intel Israel team

One of Intel’s Vice-Presidents, Rony Friedman, is confident that regardless of the company’s future, its R&D facilities in Israel will continue to play a major part in the company’s success, and that the relationship between Intel headquarters and Israel will continue to develop and grow.

Israel on the Rise, Again

On the whole, Israeli R&D companies are contributing to the rapid growth in Israeli GNP, which has been rising steadily at around 5-6 percent annually according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fraught with R&D centers and facilities belonging to the largest and most valuable companies in the world, Israel will hit the ground running in the area of R&D, and undoubtedly continue to stimulate the country’s rising GNP and overall success.

Want to learn more about investing in Israel?

The OurCrowd Guide to Investing in Israel is your comprehensive roadmap into the various opportunities to invest in Israel. Learn from experts who not only have successfully invested in the startup nation, but who have helped build it.

Jonathan Pressman

Blogger

Jonathan Pressman is a student at Franklin & Marshall College studying English literature and Judaic Studies. He is a correspondent for Lancaster Newspapers Inc.

This guest post was written by Levi Shapiro, the Managing Partner at the JIMMI Fund, a corporate venture investment fund, and concurrently Partner at TMT Strategic Advisors. He is also the organizer of Marketing & Ad:Tech Israel, Israel’s largest conference for digital advertising.

Some of the frenzy is driven by Wall Street. The bull market will celebrate its 5th anniversary in March (NASDAQ grew 38.3% last year, more than any other major index), and the IPO market is booming. 222 firms held initial public offerings last year, raising $55 Billion, the most since 406 companies went public for $97 million in 2000.

Now the cost of entry to the Party is rising. Across all investment stages, median pre-money valuations last year rose dramatically. Seed-stage deals now require $5.1 million; Series A rounds reached $9.4 million; Series C rounds soared 23% to $62.6 million; Series D and later rounds are now a lofty $105.2 million.

The bubble came to Israel too, with a record $4.2 billion in exits, averaging $83 million. While there were IPOs (notably Wix in November), most of the acquisitions were made by global technology companies with R&D Centers (and their corporate M&A teams) in Israel, including Apple, Google, EMC, AOL, Cisco, IBM and now Facebook.

The fastest growing exit category in Israel last year was digital media, so the performance of the sector will help determine whether or not the party continues. Danny Cohen, Partner at Carmel Ventures and keynote speaker at the upcoming Marketing & Ad;Tech Israel conference, discusses three trends impacting 2014 Israeli digital media: Content Marketing, Next-Gen Publishing and Mobile Advertising.

Content Marketing: Brands understand the value of objective, toned-down, and highly relevant content. Content marketing is being addressed by compaies like Outbrain and Taboola. The challenge now is in content creation. In the next 12 to 24 months, brand budgets will encourage startups to address the scalability challenges of content creation.

Mobile Advertising: The shift from web-based browsing to mobile/tablet browsing benefited Facebook. But the majority of advertising-based sites are struggling to integrate highly-engaged and relevant mobile ads. In 2014 we are looking for innovations around better mobile advertising.

Danny Cohen, as well as senior thought-leaders from companies like WPP, Dentsu, Lenovo, Citibank, AT&T, AOL, Orange, Michelin, SAB Miller and Unilever will share their vision (all presentations available online) about the future of digital marketing on February 11th at the Marketing & Ad:Tech Israel conference. Lets hope the Party continues.

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Editor’s note:

Marketing & Ad:Tech Israel is an annual conference for the world’s top brands, agencies and publishers to explore the future of digital marketing. All presentations are TED-style lectures by globally recognized thought-leaders. The highlight of the conference is a Business Contest with six startup companies. Winner and 1st Runner-Up receive a suite of more than $20,000 worth of free services while the winning startup is eligible for a Series A round of funding arranged by OurCrowd.

Any startup with an existing product or service and that has raised less than $1.5 million to date is welcome to apply. Application deadline is January 27th, 2014. Submit materials to chaim.tessler@ourcrowd.com.

OurCrowd’s founder and CEO, Jon Medved, who is a speaker at the event, will award the prize to the winning startup.

This guest post was written by Shy Rosenzweig and originally published on The Times of Israel (Ops & Blogs). Shy Rosenzweig is an experienced entrepreneur & and “innovation freak” who specializes in marketing and product development. Shy is the co-founder and COO at Meetey.com – a local social network. @ShyRosenzweig

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The title “Growth Hacker” started gaining its popularity after Sean Ellis first coined the term in 2010. Before that, growth hackers were simply called “marketers” for lack of a better name. A growth hacker is a marketer, but with one focus in mind – growth. That’s not to say that all marketers are not interested in growth – they are, but the difference is in the extent of their focus.

In a large corporation, you’ve got your VP Marketing or CMO at the top of the marketing food chain. This person looks at the big picture of everything – customer satisfaction, revenues, brand awareness, reputation management, partnerships, etc. It’s quite a lot to focus on, so they’ll have a team working with them. One person will focus on managing affiliates, another on writing great copy, one on business development… you get the picture. Every person in this big marketing team has their own responsibilities, goals and methods of obtaining them.

A growth hacker has only one goal and will use any channel they can to obtain it. Because of this, your typical growth hacker will be knowledgeable in many fields, such as social media marketing, UI/UX, etc. Basically, it’s the entire marketing team stuffed into one person in terms of the channels being used and the skills required, but not in terms of responsibilities and goals.

Growth hackers are creative and analytical. They will experiment with new methods of obtaining their goals and will measure and track everything. Some say they need to be programmers but this not really a must. They are tech-savvy because most of the channels they use require them to be, but assuming they have a developer or programmer to work with, a growth hacker can succeed with minimum programming skills.

Why are growth hackers ideal for startups?

There are two main reasons a startup should have a growth hacker: budget and goals.

Budget

Startups don’t usually have the budgets that large corporations do and can’t afford to hire a big marketing team. In fact, most startups start with only 2 or 3 people, ideally one person being the tech expert, one knowledgeable in business, and another in marketing.

A growth hacker is the ideal marketing expert to have on a startup team in terms of budget. Not only does it provide the business with a one-man marketing team, but it also reduces marketing expenses. Growth hackers use any channel they can, but tend to focus on low-cost marketing, using the viral potential available in social media to their advantage.

Goals

Here’s where things get tricky. A typical VP Marketing or CMO mindset won’t work for a startup because when they first start, they should have only one goal in mind – growth. Reputation management and customer satisfaction are important, but they don’t mean anything if no one knows who you are. In its first stages, a business needs a growth hacker, someone who will use any channel and method at their disposal to obtain one goal – growth.

Hiring a Growth Hacker

Identifying a growth hacker isn’t the easiest thing in the world. There are a lot of talented marketers out there that aren’t calling themselves “growth hackers”, when it’s exactly what they are, while others falsely claim to be the growth hacker you’re looking for. There are several things to keep in mind when searching for a growth hacker for your startup:

Creative

Every business is different, in terms of audience, circumstances, budget, you name it. So even if you found a growth hacker that succeeded in reaching amazing goals at a previous business, it doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do the same for you. If they intend on using the same methods they’ve used before, they’re not for you. You want someone who will try new things – trial and error is a good thing here. You want them to think outside of the box, to think of things to add to your interface or website that you would have never thought of. The online world is changing every day. New networks are being added, search engines change their algorithms, features that were a hit a month ago could be total failures today – a growth hacker knows this and must be able to adapt.

Analytical and Organized

Because a growth hacker needs to be creative and to experiment, and because they need to do this on so many channels – they need to be able to track every single thing they do to understand what’s working and what’s not. They need to be organized and OCD when it comes to the little details.

Ethical

While a growth hacker does have one goal in mind – you do not want someone who will do “whatever it takes” to obtain it. Very much like affiliate marketing, growth hacking is getting a lot of negative rep because of bad apples doing everything they can to make money. You don’t want someone like this because while they may get your company more revenues or increase your client base in the short term, it will eventually come back to bite you in the ass (excuse the French). A good growth hacker is creative and talented enough to get to their goal without being unethical.

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Keep in mind that even if you’ve got a great growth hacker who gets your company the growth you wanted – it usually means that growth hacker will move on. Once you get big enough and your budget increases, they’ll probably hand the reins over to your new marketing team.

From the billion dollar acquisition of Waze to a plethora of IPOs in the industries of agriculture, science, technology, and social media, Israeli startups have been turning heads and smashing records after a very successful year in 2013.

Global presence

According to Cornell University’s 2013 Global Innovation Index Rankings, Israel ranked 14th of 142 countries in innovation, in addition to earning the number two spot among startup ecosystems worldwide, second only to California’s Silicon Valley.

Startups developed in Israel seem to be instant sensations on various global markets. Despite Israel’s meager population of just over 8 million, the less-than sizeable nation-state has more companies listed on the NASDAQ’s exchange than any country after the United States and China . 2013 has been a year of momentous growth in the Israeli startup world — the third quarter of 2013 alone attracted $660 million investor dollars raised by 162 companies, the largest single-quarter performance in well over a decade.

High tech success

2013 was a prodigious year for high-tech startups in Israel. While Waze took the cake with its billion-dollar acquisition, other companies such as Mobileye took the market by storm, releasing 1.5 million vision-sensing devices that have improved automobile safety, and are currently being used by iconic manufacturers such as Volvo, BMW, Honda, Audi and Ford. 2013 also featured the $345 million exit of PrimeSense, the technology behind Microsoft’s Kinect, enabling gamers to use their whole bodies to to control play of onscreen characters. While these companies and others are making exits in the low hundreds of millions, 8 of 89 apps on The Next Web’s list of best iOS apps released in 2013 were Israeli-born.

Larger returns, less exits

Notwithstanding all of the success in 2013, the startup world in Israel is undergoing major changes. These changes are already manifest, and consist namely of Israeli startups scaling up. While Israeli startups were previously making relatively small exits and quick sales in the tens of millions, these same entrepreneurial types are now overlooking exits under $100 million, and are refraining from going public early, in hopes of a more rewarding exit at a higher valuation. In short, Israeli companies are choosing to go up for IPO less frequently, but those that do are being snatched up at even higher values.

Conclusion

As 2014 gets underway, the success of Israeli startups is expected to continue, perhaps most notably in the technology sector. Though there will likely be a greater number of companies floating in IPOs as entrepreneurs have resisted selling out too early and mergers & acquisitions should be active — occurring in later stages, with more substantial revenues, and fetching higher prices from the global leaders buying them.

Want to learn more about investing in Israel?

The OurCrowd Guide to Investing in Israel is your comprehensive roadmap into the various opportunities to invest in Israel. Learn from experts who not only have successfully invested in the startup nation, but who have helped build it.

Jonathan Pressman

Blogger

Jonathan Pressman is a student at Franklin & Marshall College studying English literature and Judaic Studies. He is a correspondent for Lancaster Newspapers Inc.

This post was written by Karen Kozek fromThe Trendlines Group, Israel’s leading agritech and medtech incubator.

It’s that time again. A time to take a look back at Trendlines and our portfolio companies in 2013.

Last year, our portfolio companies raised ~$20 million (~NIS 70 million). Among these companies were LapSpace, Leviticus Cardio and MitrAssist. As well, ApiFix completed its second funding round. Last year marked the first time our companies received investments from Chinese investors. Since 2007, our portfolio companies have raised $140 million (not including government funding).

With our entrepreneur partners, we created 9 new companies in 2013. On the agritech side, BioFishency, FuturaGraft, Metabolic Robots,Saturas, and Valentis started up. And in medical, we established Arch2Fix, Omeq Medical, STS Medical, and VisiDome. Since 2007, Trendlines has started 52 medical and agricultural technology companies. Our portfolio now numbers 55, including 15 revenue-stage companies.

Awards & Recognition

A number of our companies gained local and international recognition last year.

Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist named ApiFix and Sol Chip “Best Start-Ups.” Sol Chip also received the award for Best Technical Development of Energy Harvesting at IDTechEx 2013 IDTechEx.

GreenSpense walked away two awards from the 2013 International Cleantech Open Ideas Competition in California: 1st place in the Chemistry & Advanced Materials Global Ideas category and 2nd place overall. Closer to home, Mem-Tech’s founders, Prof. Raphael Semiat and Prof. Moris Eisen, were awarded the prestigious Innovative Applied Engineering Research prize by the Board of Governors of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

A Dynamic Year for Trendlines Corporate

The year in review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning events and conferences, from our 3rd Annual Investment Event in Israel that started the year off to our 2nd Annual Agrivest, an extraordinary finish. In between, we organized three U.S. Road Shows (medical in March and October and agritech in April), BioMed in June, and ICI in December. We addressed two conferences in China. Throughout the year, we regularly hosted groups and visitors from around the world at our Misgav headquarters.

Other highlights:

Marketing: We completed a major rebranding, including refreshing the Trendlines look, revamping nearly all our corporate identity pieces from business cards to brochures, and built a new website.

Operations: We completed a remodel and expansion of our Misgav headquarters, an expansion of our Tel Aviv area conference center, and new facilities and location for Trendlines Agtech.

HR: We welcomed several new professionals to our team in 2013.

We’re looking forward to another dynamic year of activities, events, and successes for Trendlines and our companies!

This guest post was written by The Trendlines Group, Israel’s leading agritech and medtech incubator, with a portfolio of over 40 companies.

In 1993, when Israel began to take its journey towards becoming the “Start-up Nation,” American immigrants Steve Rhodes and Todd Dollinger founded Trendlines International as a business development consultancy focused on assisting and guiding innovation-based Israeli companies in the complex U.S. market. Todd and Steve were among the trailblazers in Israel’s fledgling high-tech startup nationhood and moved to create and develop companies to improve the human condition.

At a time of dwindling natural resources, climate change, increasing demand for high quality nutritious food and declining productivity growth, especially in high and middle income countries, such as the United States and China, global challenges have created compelling business opportunities in agritech. Todd and Steve understood early that Israeli agritech had an world-wide edge in this field.

Israel has new solutions to cope with the not-too-distant world food crises that are ready now for commercialization and adoption. New agritech start-ups, including advanced precision farming techniques, water optimization, robotics, sensor driven technology and environmentally-friendly agrochemicals can dramatically increase food yields in a sustainable, cost effective way at a time when such needs are currently unmet and growing, presenting a wide range of early-seed investment opportunities.

Israel’s strong R&D infrastructure supports multidisciplinary innovation, yet only a fraction of Israeli Agritech R&D is exploited commercially. The nascent stage of the industry in Israel is creating a unique moment for investors.

From December 2 – 5, 2013 investors from across the globe will travel to Israel to learn about the most innovative and advanced solutions for dealing with the world’s upcoming food crisis.

On the AgriVest tour, investors and industry professionals will have an opportunity to learn about cutting edge agricultural innovations from Israel and meet the entrepreneurs behind the startup companies that are revolutionizing the agritech industry. At the 2nd annual Agrivest Conference (a stand-alone event on December 3), participants will experience and learn first-hand how Israel has become a world leader in agriculture technology and what the future of agritech holds.

Interested investors should come to Israel and learn firsthand why agritech is the Israel’s next breakout financial success story and be a part of it!